News & Stories

DomeX Impressions from the 20 Meter Demonstration in China

"The image was so good it exceeded all my expectations! The brightness and resolution are incredible but what really stood apart was the contrast. It has an excellent, totally black background that colors pop off of."

IPS Planetarian Article Features Liberty Science Center

The latest issue of the International Planetarium Society's Planetarian Magazine features an article about our latest True8K™ installation in the new Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium at Liberty Science Center, the Western Hemisphere's largest dome theater.

E&S' True8K Digital Dome Demo in Beijing

On April 19, 2017, the largest planetarium and digital giant screen dome theater in the world hosted a demo of an Evans & Sutherland (E&S) True8K™ Digistar 6 digital dome system at the China Science and Technology Museum (CSTM).

MarsOne Thousand One

Adler Planetarium Selects 8K Digistar 6

The Adler Planetarium operates two domes, all day, 363 days a year – presenting nearly 5000 planetarium presentations each year. For this demanding schedule, the Adler is refurbishing both of their dome theaters with 8K resolution Digistar 6 systems from Evans & Sutherland.

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

The Perlan in Iceland Selects 8K Digistar 6

The Perlan, a landmark dome-shaped, glass building in Reykjavik will be home of Iceland's biggest nature exhibition in 2017. It will feature man-made ice caves and the country's first planetarium: a stunning 8K resolution digital dome theater with Digistar 6 from Evans & Sutherland.

E&S and Christie® are proud to be major partner-level sponsors of the annual Giant Screen Cinema Association International Conference and Trade Show (GSCA) taking place October 4-7 at downtown Toronto's Fairmont Royal York Hotel, Scotiabank Theatre, and the Ontario Science Centre

Evans & Sutherland and the Zeiss-Großplanetarium Berlin, are pleased to announce that the E&S Digistar system will be installed in the newly renovated Zeiss-Großplanetarium scheduled for reopening in Summer 2016.

E&S To Introduce Digistar 6 at IPS

Evans & Sutherland (E&S) will introduce Digistar 6, it's latest release of the world renowned Digistar digital planetarium/digital dome system at the International Planetarium Society (IPS) Conference in Warsaw, Poland on June 20, 2016.

“Upgrading to the Digistar 5 system with the Christie projectors was huge for us,” says Kate Storm, director of theaters, COSI. “This system does everything we ever wanted a planetarium to do or wished it could do.”

“The technology in the planetarium allows us to create and develop unique content,” says Storm. “We created a custom show meeting Ohio’s learning standards for fifth graders in Columbus city schools during specially designed field trips. The feedback was incredible. Teachers and administrators told us the students could visualize and explain the concepts when they returned to school.”

Houston Reaches the Stars

Astronomy knowledge is exploding at ever wavelength, taking us closer to the edge of space and the beginning of time. Now planetarium projection technology can provide the computer processing, data storage, resolution, and brightness to deliver the farthest galaxy.

True 8K Digistar 5 System Ships to Houston

Latest from our team in Tromso, Norway

Image Credit: Marty Sisam/Evans & Sutherland

After a very snowy day with gale force winds the team returned to the Eiscat site last night. The weather forecast was very poor but our own local analysis suggested the possibility of a hole developing over the mountainous valley of Ramfjorden, site of the Eiscat installation.

In snow over 2 foot deep they set up the camera equipment for the four hour timelapse sequence. This would provide about 30 seconds of material for viewing on the dome. All shooting was being done in 8K format.

After an hour or so the sky cleared and although aurora activity was forecast to be low a beautiful outburst of green Aurora lit the valley and silhouetted the Radar Dish as it moved across the heavens.
Using radar, the Eiscat instruments investigate the upper atmosphere and search for disturbances related to geomagnetic activity.

Bangkok Planetarium

Bangkok's long-time astronomical center is ready to beckon and captivate a new generation of children with the universe's mystical lure. The galaxies can now be explored using Digistar 5 in the renovated Bangkok Planetarium.

Digital renovation of the Space Theater

The Space Theatre in the National Museum of Natural Science, Taichung was the first large planetarium in Taiwan. Upon deciding to update the facility, the museum started its renovation with a single multi-purpose 8K Digistar 5 system in August 2014, with the renovation completed in June 2015.

Christie Case Study on Science Museum of Virginia

Making the move from film to digital
projectors, the Science Museum of
Virginia upgrades their 1570 giant
screen film projection system to
the world’s first 8K digital fulldome
system installed as a 1570 film
projection replacement in a dome,
enhancing the content they can offer. Read the Entire Case Study Here

Digistar on the White House Lawn

Monday night’s Astronomy Day celebration on the White House lawn featured a portable Discovery Dome operated by educators from the Lunar and Planetary Institute with support from the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Rice University, and Evans & Sutherland. Rice provided the dome as part of their dome loaner program, HMNS provided the projection system and all of the content formatted correctly. Christine Shupla made the 20 minute presentation live using Robot Explorers solar system animations from Evans & Sutherland. Every institution played a critical role in making Astronomy Day under the Dome a success. Christine Shupla’s creative use of Robot Explorers could inspire others to use this show as full-dome animations for telling a live story of NASA’s missions to the planets.

It is exciting to realize that these very portable Discovery Domes can reach every student in the US with the

Innovative New Theater at Shanghai Natural History Museum

Opened in June 2015 at the new Shanghai Natural History Museum visitors can now experience being swept to the bottom of the primeval Cambrian ocean 550 million years ago, a time when animals first appeared on Earth.

Science Centre Singapore

One of three new 8K resolution E&S 2015 installations in Asia, the Science Center Sinapore's Omni-Theatre is Asia's brightest digital fulldome system with each of the five Christie Boxer 4K30 projectors displaying a never-before-seen 30,000 lumens in a dome.

Verkehrshaus

Flint, Michigan's Planetarium debuts most advanced technology in North America

Historically known as "The Vehicle City", Flint will be unveiling a completely renovated Longway Planetarium in the city’s revered Cultural Center campus. The event will be taking place during a weekend long celebration called the "Weekend of Wonder", May 29 – May 31.

8K Systems Demystified

The term "8K" is one of the latest buzz words in the fulldome community. As of today, there is no industry specification or standard definition for 8K. Many have taken liberties in calling systems that use five or six 4K projectors as "8K" solutions, when they actually do not produce 8K x 8K resolution.

Christophe Bertier Joins Digistar Sales Team

Liberty Science Center Opens With True8K Digistar 6

Thanks to the power of Digistar 6, a groundbreaking True8K™ display system, and a NanoSeam dome, the new Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium at Liberty Science Center, the largest and most technologically advanced planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, is your portal to amazing and unseen worlds, just waiting for you to discover.

Houston’s NASA-approved True8K Planetarium

Once the unprecedented pinnacle of sports stadium infrastructure, Houston’s original Astrodome still stands today, an abandoned homage to a bygone area.

Not far away, however, sits another city institution that houses, in its most literal form, another “Astrodome.” Like the original Houston venue, it’s setting a global standard for technology and multimedia production.

Probing the Depths of the Universe

For over 50 years the Bangkok Planetarium has been impressing visitors but more recently, thanks to Christie® Boxer and Evans & Sutherland's Digistar 5 system, the immersive cosmological experience it now offers has made the planetarium a must-visit destination. Deep space journeys and close-ups of objects in the farthest depths of outer space are attracting new visitors and enticing familiar patrons to return.

Adler Planetarium Boosts Image Quality

The Grainger's Digistar 6 system is billed as providing 8K resolution. It is comprised of "six Sony SRX-T615 4K projectors with 18,000 lumens per projector and 12,000:1 contrast," according to the company.

The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

In May of 2016, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis opened their new Beyond Spaceship Earth gallery which includes an immersive space object experience called the Schaefer Planetarium & Space Object Theater.

DellEMC Case Study on E&S

To deliver its industry-leading Digistar planetarium projection software, Evans & Sutherland sought a dependable, robust platform to easily incorporate into a turnkey solution that could be supported virtually anywhere in the world.

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science today celebrated the grand re-opening of the Gates Planetarium. The Planetarium temporarily closed earlier this month to install upgraded projection equipment, making the experience sharper and more vibrant.

Robin Sip Joins E&S as Director of Show Production & Content

Evans & Sutherland is pleased to welcome Mr. Robin Sip to E&S. Robin is an award winning Director and Writer of the best-selling fulldome productions Dawn of the Space Age, Natural Selection, and Dinosaurs at Dusk.

E&S and Skypoint Introduce Digistar Lite

Evans & Sutherland (E&S) and Skypoint Planetariums are excited to announce Digistar Lite for portable planetariums and dome theaters. Now portable domes can have the Difference of Digistar at their fingertips.

Fulldome Art with Digistar 5

Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science recently hosted an event featuring the art of local artist, Jenna Citrus, featured on their dome using Digistar 5. We love seeing all the creative and artistic uses of Digistar.

Houston Museum of Natural Science

The renovated Burke Baker Planetarium is the first True8K™ planetarium in the world. Across a 50 foot Spitz NanoSeam dome, the system displays over 50 million unique pixels and provides 8,000 pixels across every meridian.

Burke Baker's Planetearium Re-Opening Out of this World

"This week Evans & Sutherland delivered on their True8K vision and exceeded all our expectations in Houston. The combination of high resolution, high contrast, high brightness, and rich color palette has turned our planetarium into a destination with record crowds and much applause. We have a star field that is as dark and rich as any on Earth. We have video that is far sharper, more vibrant, and more immersive than in any movie theater. In a True8K planetarium with its high frame rate, a new reality surrounds you, immerses you, and takes you where you could never go before. The Burke Baker Planetarium is not just a movie theater, but a unique audience experience, like a world-class exhibit, to be enjoyed oand over again." -Dr. Carolyn Sumners
Vice President for Astronomy and the Physical Sciences
HMNS

At Last, The Ultimate Planetarium

On March 11, the Houston Museum of Natural Science's Burke Baker Planetarium becomes the world's first True8K™ Planetarium, displaying fulldome starfields and movies with over 50 million unique pixels. A typical digital movie screen is only 2 million pixels.

On Earth as it is From Heaven

As part of a new 8K show production in conjunction with Houston Museum of Natural Science, Evans & Sutherland has a photography team on the ground north of the Arctic Circle. They are photographing the Aurora Borealis, while coordinating with astronauts aboard the International Space Station to capture the same Aurora, in the same locations at the same time.

Using special equipment these images are being specifically captured in 8K resolution for the fulldome. The first results of these coordinated aurora images are now coming in. Sunday night (7 February, 2016) this active aurora was captured by our team and the ISS astronauts at the same time over Norway.

Updates to the Griffith's Samuel Oschin Planetarium

The Griffith Observatory's Samuel Oschin Planetarium re-invented itself again in late 2015, nearly ten years after a major renovation that ushered the Los Angeles facility squarely into the realm of fulldome.

The latest update brought Digistar 5 along with six Christie Boxer 30,000-lumen projectors to cover the 75-foot dome seamlessly.

EC-1, City of Industry

At EC-1 City of Industry East, there is a new 8K Digistar 5 devoted to astronomy education. This is the first of two Digistar 5 installations at EC1 Lodz, Poland. A second dome theater featuring a Digistar 5 system in 3D is installing now.

New Digistar 5 to illuminate Scobee Planetarium

San Antonio College's Scobee Planetarium will close for the remainder of the semester starting Nov. 20 to upgrade the projection system in the theater.
We are thrilled to be installing a new 4K Digistar 5 system with dual Christie Boxer projectors. Full Article from theranger.org

GSCA Dome Day 2015

As a follow-up to the world's first, split screen demo between 15/70 film and 8K fulldome digital projection at the Science Museum of Virginia last October, Evans & Sutherland (E&S) again demonstrated an 8K Digistar 5 digital fulldome system at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California for the Giant Screen Cinema Association's (GSCA) Dome Day.

Giant Screen Cinema Association 2015 Sponsorship

The Giant Screen Cinema Association (GSCA) is pleased to announce that Evans & Sutherland has signed on as a partner-level sponsor, the highest level of support, for the upcoming GSCA International Conference and Trade Show in San Francisco on September 9-11.

Shanghai Natural History Museum

The immersive environment inside the museum's Theater of the Cambrian Explosion is a one-of-a-kind attraction in the world. The dome is inverted and has a 5-meter diameter central pedestal in the center for up to 40 viewers per show.

GSCA Digital Dome Day 2014 Wrap-Up

On October 22, 2014, the Giant Screen Cinema Association sponsored a digital dome demonstration at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, VA. Early this year, Evans & Sutherland installed an 8K resolution digital fulldome system to replace their existing 1570 giant screen film system.

Loch Ness Productions Installs Digistar 5 System

Loch Ness Productions is pleased to announce the installation of an Evans & Sutherland Digistar 5 Producer Workstation in its Colorado studios as part of a cooperative agreement between the two companies.

2018 Lunar Calendar

Specialty cinema reaches for E&S True8K

On 19 April 2017, leaders and directors of more than 50 science museums across China gathered in the world's largest fulldome (digital dome) theater, at the China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing. for a demonstration of Evans & Sutherland (E&S) True8K™ technology. The demo was part of the Beijing International Film Festival. According to local press and others who were there, industry viewers at the demo received True8K as an absolute breakthrough – achieving the highest possible image quality on a giant dome screen and definitively surpassing the longtime benchmark set by 1570 film.

Liberty Science Center

The newly renovated Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium at the Liberty Science Center is the world's largest IMAX dome theater and will soon have the world's largest digital giant screen dome system with a True8K™ Digistar 6 system from Evans & Sutherland (E&S).

European Southern Observatory

Evans & Sutherland (E&S) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) are pleased to announce that ESO has selected the E&S Digistar system for their ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre scheduled for opening in November 2017.

Milwaukee Public Museum

Milwaukee Public Museum's planetarium is Wisconsin's largest and most modern, and is the first Planetarium in the world to debut a Digistar 6 computer projection system that fills the entire Dome Theater with stunning 3D animations, creating an immersive astronomy experience.

Planetarium Hamburg Selects 8K Digistar 6 3D System

Planetarium Hamburg, established both as an astronomical and entertainment destination for northern Germany, is undergoing a massive refurbishment in preparation for its grand reopening on February 14th, 2017.

GSCA Digital Dome Demo 2016

On Friday, October 7, 2016, the Giant Screen Cinema Association's (GSCA) Technical Committee hosted a digital dome demo at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Ontario. During this historic demo, the audience witnessed something that no other audience had ever seen before.

The Milwaukee Public Museum's Dome Theater and Planetarium will be the first planetarium in the world to debut Digistar 6 technology on Saturday, September 17. This ground breaking dome technology will replace the giant screen 15/70 film system, which was once the gold standard for giant screen projection.

European Southern Observatory Chooses Digistar

Evans & Sutherland (E&S) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) are pleased to announce that ESO has selected the E&S Digistar system for their ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre scheduled for opening in November 2017.

Milwaukee Public Museum Upgrade

In September, the Daniel M. Soref National Geographic Dome Theater & Planetarium (Dome Theater) at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) will replace their giant screen 15/70 film system with a new 8K Digistar 5 immersive digital cinema/digital planetarium system from Evans & Sutherland.

Ushering the Bangkok Planetarium to the 21st Century

What do you do when your mid-20th-century-vintage planetarium is in need of an update? As many other facilities are doing these days, we at the Bangkok Planetarium at the Science Center for Education wanted to do a tune-up on an aging facility.

Griffith Observatory

The Griffith Observatory's Samuel Oschin Planetarium re-invented itself again in late 2015, nearly ten years after a major renovation that ushered the 1930s-era Los Angeles facility squarely into the realm of digital fulldome.

Digistar Cloud Contest - Gustave Holst's The Planets

Evans & Sutherland is pleased to announce a new Cloud contest that will begin February 1, 2016. The contest is to create Digistar sequences synchronized to movements of the orchestral suite The Planets, composed by Gustav Holst.

Aurora Themed Bangkok Planetarium Opens with Excitement

More than 50 years after it first opened, Bangkok's Science Centre for Education - or the Planetarium as it was formerly known - recently underwent eight months of renovations, opening its doors wide again to moonwalkers, both young and old, just in time for National Children's Day.

Billing itself as Thailand's most advanced planetarium and equipped with a single, multipurpose 4K Digistar 5 system from the US, the venue celebrated its return with the screening of the award-winning documentary, "Experience the Aurora" by the leading American company Evans & Sutherland. Read More via The Nation (Thailand)

Otago Museum's Planetarium Shows are Sellout Success

Using Digistar 5, the talented team at Otago Museum in Dundin, New Zealand, produced three new planetarium shows for their Grand Opening in December 2015. Almost every show since the planetarium's opening has sold out.
Read More

Griffith Observatory Upgrades to Digistar 5

Griffith Observatory's new 8K Digistar 5 system drives 6 Christie Boxer projectors to produce crisp, bright images never before seen on their historic dome. Our proprietary auto-blending and auto-alignment technology allows us to take these 6 different projectors to create one bright, seamless, uniform, hi-resolution image on their iconic dome. Full Article

Hefei, China's Digistar 5 Theater Debut

Bangkok, Thailand Digistar 5 Installation

E&S recently completed installation at the Bangkok Planetarium in Thailand. The planetarium now has a Hybrid Digistar 5 system with dual center mounted Christie Boxer projectors and a Mark IV Zeiss projector. Opening of the renovated planetarium will be later this year.

National Museum of Natural Science

Hopping on the Cloud to Sharable Media

The June issue of the Planetarian included two great articles: one about how our clients are using the Digistar 5 Cloud Library, and one about an incredibly creative use of Digistar 5’s real time capabilities to create Art 360 at Arizona Science Center.

Explore New Horizons at the Revamped Omni-Theatre

The Science Centre Singapore (SCS) is reopening its Omni-Theatre, which has been digitally enhanced with the world's latest and brightest 8K digital fulldome system to offer a distinctly immersive experience.

Auto Blending

The Evans & Sutherland Auto Alignment and Auto Blending systems automatically provide multi projector alignment, color blending and brightness matching to ensure the system looks as seamless as possible. This proprietary system is fully integrated into the Digistar 5 software.

The 60 fps Difference

In the world of real-time computer graphics, a visual refresh rate of 60Hz (60 frames per second) is nothing new. Evans & Sutherland visual systems for simulation have operated at this rate since the early 1970s.